Wedding season is in full swing and Zach and I feel as busy as a bride and groom. After making the pies, we had wedding duties the following weekend on July 3rd. Zach was the officiant and I was the cake decorator. We had a blast!
Coloring the fondant & assembling the cake:
The cake delivered and staged:
Me with Jenni, the baker:
Our friends are getting married this July and the bride asked asked me and another great foodie friend and awesome baker to make the cake. We decided we should test out different chocolate cakes for both taste and sturdiness for decorating and cutting.
Obviously, these were just thrown together to get a sense of some of the design elements the bride wanted. I was pleasantly surprised how easy the fondant was to work with and how smooth it comes out. The cake for the wedding will have edible ribbon and not be white. I don't want to say too much more so that it still a surprise at the wedding.
The greenery and moose were us being silly after breaking out the champagne and having ate way too much chocolate cake. :)
Since its the very beginning of fall here in Anchorage and the summer's been rather cold and rainy (meaning there's little left in bloom), we decided to see if our honey was ready for harvest. On Sunday, Zach pulled some frames and I tried to cut the areas of capped honey off. For the most part, all went as we expected (other than we didn't have a lot of honey). You can see the darker comb to the left of where I'm cutting, that's dried out comb the bees built up and some parts are filled with bee pollen, which amazing enough seems stickier than honey. Once we finish the harvesting, I'll post a picture of the honey in a jar. I expect that we'll only get a couple of jars this year. Oh well, at least (a) the bees survived and (b) there was some honey.
While in Juneau last week, I went gold panning for the first time. It takes lots of patience, but you couldn't beat the scenery or the weather.
I decided to make a cake yesterday. It called for softened butter, but all we had were sticks of butter straight from the fridge. Without a microwave, I needed a way to soften the butter. I took a gratin dish, filled it half way with hot water from the tap and put the sticks of butter in for about 20 seconds on each side. And viola, softened butter. All the other techniques have yielded melted butter, not softened.
For our first anniversary on July 4th, Zach and I were in McCarthy and Kennecott and I thought my gift to him should be something associated with that experience. So, I got us a guided glacier tour where we got to spend 4-5 hours on the glacier. While Zach and I have seen many glaciers we've never been able to get on them and explore. It was a great experience and the first time in crampons for both of us. Certainly an anniversary to remember.
Update: I put together another pair of pants on Sunday and these turned out much better. So much so, I may just keep the first pair and call them a prototype. Perhaps give them to my sister's kid later in life for a doll.
Today I took Zach's old Raleigh road bike and turned it into a single speed. Zach helped, of course, but I learned a lot more about how bikes work. The first picture is of the refinished bike. The others are in-progress pics.
